Post-IM and 2015 plans

I know, its been a while since I've posted.  Part of that was IM Boulder didn't go as I had hoped.  It wasn't fun.  It should have been fun.  Instead the training was meh at best (solid training but very very meh on the fun scale, mostly due to heat) and the race itself - or major parts of it - were sucky.  Not because of my body or lack of preparation, just heat and a soul sucking un-fun bike course.

Then I got a viral infection for a month.  (I strongly suspect the Boulder Res gave this to me).  Apparently I left my immune system out on the IM course, because I was toast.

And then I got laid off.  Which was actually a mostly good thing.  Sure, not really having money isn't so great.  But for months I'd be at work for ~25 hrs/week, only got paid for the little work I could find (like 10 hrs/week) and would constantly be checking my phone/computer for work emails in case some more work appeared.  My free time wasn't really free because I was constantly trying to rustle up work that just wasn't there.  So I got laid off and now I am not glued to my phone or my computer, constantly checking and waiting for something to happen.  Now I decide my day and my schedule.  Its been almost 3 months and I really don't think I've been so relaxed and happy in a long time.

The funny thing is that I'm rarely by a computer anymore and so I really haven't wanted to sit down and blog.  I'm actually busier than I have been in a long time.

The first month I did a ton of home improvement.  I re-tiled both of my fireplaces, which included learning how to dry wall, how to operate a wet tile saw, and actually tiling things.  It looks kick ass.
I also painted a bunch and did some landscaping.

Zipper approves of the fireplace and paint job

We had an amazing fall - complete Indian Summer.  So, so nice.  So Tuesdays became Trail Run Tuesdays and Thursdays became hike days.  There was also some bike rides thrown in there, but all very relaxed rides.  This gave me a chance to reconnect with nature, see new things, and feel like ME.

just one of my many trail runs this fall

Now its November and well, I need a job because I'm getting bored and a bit fuzzy around the edges.  I still have to paint every baseboard in my house - I've been saying this for a month.  Its not very exciting.  And its snowy out which means less trail work and more tready work.  Again, not so fun.

This past month has actually been really, really good on a relationship level.  I can go and have fun, meaning I eat/drink whatever I want (beer! pizza!  wings!) instead of being "serious triathlete Erin" who is very careful about diet and sleep because of training demands.  Will and I have been doing something fun every weekend - because I have time and energy.  We needed this.  I know he did.  He puts up with a lot of things - things that he didn't sign up for - when I'm training.

birthday beer for the birthday boy

So 2015 will be the year of fun.  Once I get past the Disney Dopey.  I hope it will be fun, but I'm not sure doing a 5k, 10k, half marathon, and full marathon over 4 days will be fun.  Or marathon training in Colorado in the winter.  Once I'm past that, its only fun things for me.  Trail runs, skiing, Boulder 70.3, sprint tris, and an Xterra tri.  Fun and different.  Work on speed and mountain biking.  And if I want to take a weekend off and go camping and fishing, I can do just that and not worry about how it will set my training back.

A bunch of my friends lemminged and signed up for IMAZ through the charity spots.  I have IMAZ on my radar for 2016 but having a good support system for 2015 is really pulling at my heart strings and is making my resolve for "no IMs in 2015" weak.  But then I remember how burned out I was after Boulder and how I need to let my spirit and my body recover in 2015.  And really, I promised Will that he'd have his wife back in 2015, and I intend to keep that promise.

So here's to a fun filled 2015, full of spirit and adventures.

Flower update

I am having such fun this spring.  Nearly every day, something new is going on in the yard.  Its fun to explore and see what is new.

The daffodills are the star of the yard right now.  They are doing extremely well.  I just love them - they're so cheerful!

The tulips are finally blooming, despite the yard-bunny's best efforts to eat them.  I got the Monet mixture - all pastel shades of pink and yellow.  So far, they're white, pink, and dark red.

Our lilacs are finally blooming.  I LOVE lilacs and it was such a nice suprise that the former owners of this house planted several.  When I lived in Houston, I really missed lilacs.  They don't grow there and that made me sad.

Our irises have been a bit of a mystery.  We got several from Will's grandmother's yard in Idaho.  I thought it would be a nice tribute to have some of her plants in our yard.  They were all done blooming when I dug them out, so I have NO IDEA what colors I grabbed.  Then a bit later in August, my mom found some random guy in the neighborhood who was dividing and giving away some of his very expensive, award-winning irises.  Mostly in blue.  We think.  And I just randomly scattered both sets of irises throughout the yard, so I really have no idea what is planted where.  I'm just going to assume blue = random guy, everything else = grandma.

My mom has been telling me all winter that the irises won't bloom the first year.  I did some googling, and the interwebs told me that if the rhyzomes are planted early enough in the late summer, chances are good for flowers.  We planted the Idaho ones in mid-August, so I thought we'd have a good chance for flowers.

And look what I found this morning:



You can see one of my alliums in the near left background, my pack
of garlic directly behind the iris, and some daffys in the far background

Isn't it beautiful?

View from the top, showing off the coloring:

So extremely pretty.  I just wish it was located in a place where I didn't have to peer through some corner window to see it.

We also have a white iris flowering.  While not as pretty, it sure smells good.

My garden experiment has been an experiment.  And that's about the best I can say about it.  About 3 weeks ago I posted this:

This is my indoor seed starter.  In the foreground is mostly lettuce, with some kohlrabi and some herbs.  In the background are tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (ie the long to germinate plants).  The background plants were starting to get leggy, so I left the lid off the greenhouse.  And then Zipper ate all the plants.  Poo.  These guys needed to be in the ground mid-May and need a good 8-12 weeks before they're ready to go outside.  I now had only 4-6 weeks.  :( 

I transplanted the cool weather seedlings last weekend.  And then they all shriveled and died from the heat.  So, my big "start the seeds indoors" experiment has not been a successful one.  So far.  I am determined to somehow get it to work.

About 2 weeks ago, I did direct-sow some cool weather seeds.  I wanted to see how they'd do outside vs their pampered inside siblings.  So far, so good:

I think these are my mixed lettuce seeds.

Yes, the cups look weird.  But here's my logic:  From top to bottom, the bed consists of: several inches of mulch, weed block fabric, dirt.  You sow the seeds very shallowly in the soil. I didn't want the little seedlings to get lost in the maze of fabric and mulch, so I thought the cups were a clever way of helping them find their way.  And they seem to be happy.  I will probably be planting another round tomorrow, so we have lettuce growing in stages.

Also: 2 of our 6 hops are showing leaves.  The hops we took from Cow Camp in Idaho and some Chinook hops.  But of course, I neglected to snap a photo of them.  They've been secured in chicken wire so the bunnies won't eat them.  Hopefully they'll be happy and grow us lots of hops.

More spring

We have a daffodil!

so cheerful!

It still boggles my mind that people lived in our house for 15 years and never bothered to plant any flowers.  Who does that?!?!  Bulbs are so easy.  Honestly, I think it took us maybe an hour to plant everything last fall.  And then all you do is sit back and watch the show.

Green things are slowly poking up from the ground.  I've made it a habit to wander through the back yard every 2 days or so, investigating progress and looking for new green things.  Its also been entertaining trying to figure out what I planted and where.  Notes or a map or something would have been helpful, but this has been kind of fun.

The garlic has been going bonkers.  The stalks are now about the diameter of green onions.  Here's a not very good side-by-side comparison photo of the growth in the past 2 weeks.

It would help if I managed to shoot things for useful reference.  Still, you get the idea.  The bunnies have stayed away from these, I wonder why?

We now have tulips coming up along with one hyacinth (that a bunny ate a good chunk of) and a mystery bulb.  I think the mystery bulb is an allium, but I had 6 of these bulbs and I only see one of them so far.  Of course, I don't remember where I planted any of them.

mystery bulb - the flower looks a bit strange... kinda like an onion flower.



tulips



the bunny ate the top clean off this one.  I think its a big hyacinth.  maybe.  stupid bunny

The grape hyacinths are poking up all over the yard and, in one spot, they have started blooming.  My mom suggesed these because they're inexpensive and they spread pretty quickly.  I think I got 100 of them for $20.  Pretty sure I planted them in groups of 20, but I can't quite remember.

aren't they cute?

I've started to plant my long-lead time seeds indoors.  Tomatoes (for a friend), peppers and eggplants.  I think this weekend I'll start herbs and some other things that get planted mid-May.  Although, if things stay as warm as they have been, I suspect they'll get planted much earlier than May.

Gardening is so cool. :)

Sprung

Is it me, or does it suddenly feel like *wham!* it's spring?

It is 70+ degrees in Denver this week.  70.  In March. 

Last year, I was outside all spring but I really don't remember a sudden change to Spring.  At least not like this.  Of course, it could be that even though I was outside, I was too focused on running or cycling to actually take note of my surroundings.  And it did snow up until mid-May.  So spring may have been more gradual.  I dunno.

Whatever the reason, this week, all of a sudden, I am PUMPED for warmer weather.  I love the longer days (hello, it's light enough so I can run or bike after work!). I love the warmer days.  I just feel energized.  And I actually feel like training.  Is that was a proper off-season is supposed to do?  Leave you hungry and wanting to train again?  Craziness.

I went for my first "real" run of the season on Tuesday.  Maybe I should put "run" in quotation marks too... it was sad.  My endurance is basically nothing.  Strength feels ok.  I wasn't sore after, which is good.  But I can tell that my body is not used to running, as weird things were pulling or straining.  I kept it short - just 30 min - and I really wanted to run the next day, but I thought it was wise to wait a day or so.  No use doing too much and then getting hurt.  An interesting feature to this run?  Will came with me.  (I know... did anyone feel like hell was freezing over at about 6:30 on Tuesday night?).  He's even talked about buying real running shoes.  I know!  He had a hard time (partially because he's sick) so he did a bit less than me.  Still, it was so nice to have a buddy out with me.

In other "hey, it's Spring" observations are that my yard is doing some cool stuff.  The previous owners did practically zero landscaping, which was depressing.  How can you have a yard with no flowers?!?!  To remedy this travesty, we planted ~200 bulbs last fall.  Don't ask me what I planted exactly.  I do know that they are flowers, likely hyacinths, daffodills, and tulips.  Just don't ask me where I planted these things.  It will be a surprise.

With the warmer temps and snow melting, little green things are appearing.  It's going to be fun watching them and seeing what happens.

These might be daffodills

Autumn blaze maple with sap running down the side (dark orange staining)

do you see the fat bunny? he provides hours of entertainment to Zipper and Gunny.



skinny stuff is garlic, thicker stuff are irises.



No idea.  Could be tulips or hyacinths.

strawberry plant in the uncovered raised garden bed.  crazy thing stayed green all winter.

Horticulture



Sad looking front yard. Ok, maybe it just looks sad to me.

I don't know why, but each time we buy a house (you know, all of two times) the yard sucks.  All the plants still have their nursery tags on them, the plants are mostly kinda junky, and we have tons of empty bedding space.  Also, these houses don't have any mature trees. 

Our current house had only 5 trees - 2 mystery trees that could possibly be cherry trees, one which I was hoping was an apple tree but sadly, its a crappy crab apple tree where the fruit is a good 2" in diameter and makes good throwing weapons for the neighborhood urchins, and 2 austrian pine trees. 

Really pretty crab apple blossoms in mid-May.  Not sure
2 weeks of pretty blossoms is worth 3 months of picking
mini-apples up from your lawn.

NOTHING that would considered be a shade tree. 

The front yard is really horrible.  Ok, I'm exaggerating.  We have a very cute porch and in front of it are very ugly and mis-matched bushes.  There are some sort of juniper/evergreen shrubs combined with these weird pale green leafy bushes (which did turn a very pretty shade of red this fall).  This is completed by generic river rock underlain with weed fabric.  BLAH.  The back yard is slightly better.  We have 2 types of lilacs (I love lilacs), some really fugly ornamental plum bushes (they're very scraggly and we have a TON of them.  And we have some creeping blue juniper (which is ok) in the beds under the plums.  And a stand of aspen - which really are just big weeds.  The weird thing is that there were NO FLOWERS at all in our yard.  How sad is that?

veggie bed.  Strangely, this HUGE space was completely
devoid of plants.  Also see aspens behind it.



We bought the house in May but then had IMTX to contend with.  Which meant no time for the new house until June.  Which was too late to do anything substantial to the yard.  We did install a 5 x 8 ft raised vegetable bed.  Planted a ton of herbs (peppermint, 3 types of basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro), eggplant, zucchini, japanese cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, green peppers, butternut squash, mini-canteloupe, strawberries, and spaghetti squash.  I think it was just too late to plant anything, because for the most part, the garden was a collossal flop.  We managed to have nice herbs (although the cilantro died nearly right away - I never have luck with that stuff).  We got 3 lemon cucumbers, 2 japanese cucumbers, and a whoppiong 2 zucchini.  So weird.  I did get one decent sized spaghetti squash but when I picked it, it was fairly green and watery on the inside.  Ick.  And we did get a few tiny strawberries.  

Sad little cukes....

They were small, but actually SUPER tasty.  All I can say is THANK GOODNESS for my CSA and the weekly veggie deliveries.  Otherwise, it would have been a sad, veggie-free summer.

I also ordered a ton of plants from Spring Hill Nursery.  Huge disappointment.  They arrived as little plants, and I think by the time they got in the ground (mid-June) was was too hot and we were too far into the growing season for them to do anything.  Also: Will decided to "weed" some areas with a shovel and killed several of them.  Boo.

After about a month of being in the house, we knew that we needed some real trees.  Our living room / kitchen / bedroom face west with big windows.  Western sun + nothing to block the sun = HOT rooms.  Seriously, in the past 15 years, WHY did no one plant a real tree for shade?!?!?!?  Also, our house in situated on a corner and our back yard faces the front door and driveway of our perpendicular neighbor.  Fortunately, they don't have windows on that side of the house so its not like we're starring at each other.  Still, I really don't want to be aware of their house features.  So in late June, we ordered a HUGE (probably 20 ft tall) autumn blaze maple.  This thing will get

Maple tree. Small green shrubs were the existing lilacs.

to ~50 feet tall and should provide awesome summer shade.  We also got a baby blue eyes spruce and a vanderwolf pine.  Picking pine trees for this area was a bit tricky, because we didn't want the trees to be wide but we wanted them to be fairly tall.  Hopefully these trees will do what we need them to do.

Summer went by and we didn't really do anything with the yard.  In August, we came back from Idaho with some irises from grandma's yard. I also got some seeds from some ornamental poppies and hollyhocks that went to seed in the yard.  (I totally forgot about these until now... hmmmm).  Then my mom found some random guy who had "award winning" irises that he had split up and was giving away.  Apparently these things are expensive and lovely.  So we planted a TON of irises in the outskirts of the yard.

right to left - vanderwolf pine, baby blue eyes spruce,
austrian pine.  With icky scraggly plums in between.

  And hopefully in a few years, we'll have iris flowers.  Oh, and we got some hops from Will's grandparent's mountain cabin.  They were growing, but the bunnies ate the leaves off.  They now are surrounded by chicken wire.  Maybe next year we'll have hops for beer?

Its fall now and has snowed 3 times.  Fall is the time to plant bulbs, so you have a pretty spring. And once they're planted, you typically don't have to do anything with them for years to come.  They just do their own thing and come back every year.  When I lived in Houston, the first year we had a house I planted something like 150 bulbs. Most of them came up.  But over the following years, I'd say that maybe half came back, then half of that half, then soon, nothing.  Something to do with a lack of a hard freeze, bulbs rotting, crappy soil. Simply not worth the effort. But in Colorado, bulbs do great!  So I ordered some daffodills, tulips. hyacinths, grape hyacinths, and alliums.  And for the garden I got garlic.  We got some garlic in August from the CSA and it was some of the BEST garlic I'd ever had.  Small bulbs but they packed a punch.  A coworker told me about this garlic internet "farm" where you could order seed bulbs, so I got a small garden pack, containing 0.25 lb amounts of four different types of garlic.  I've never planted garlic before, so this whole thing will be an experience.  Apparently, you have to break up the garlic into individual cloves and plant each clove separately.  You want the big cloves, as they determine the size that your garlic will be at maturity.  So I got to work splitting up the cloves.  It was weird because it just looked like a bulb of garlic that you buy at the store.  Still not sure why these were special "seed" garlics, but whatever.  So after they were split up, I counted the cloves and we had over 60.  Which means I could have 60 heads of garlic next summer.  Good thing we're not vampires or we'd be in trouble.  Also: holy crap, that's a lot of garlic.  I didn't want to take up space in the raised garden bed, but the soil surrounding the bed is pretty good.  So I picked 4 distinct areas for each variety and planted those.  I probably should have planted them a month ago, but I didn't.  Hopefully they'll survive.  We shall see.

This spring, I would like to re-do the area in front of the front porch.  That means getting rid of those crappy ugly bushes that don't do anything and replacing them with other things.  I'm thinking miniature pines or spruces with maybe a flowering shrub.  This area faces to the north, so it could be tricky.  And I'd also like to get some potted flowers for the front porch - to make things cheery.  I also want to get into this area by our dining room.  Its a deep corner of the yard and it has 3 VERY scraggly plum bushes.  (can you tell I hate those things?)  We have at least 7 of those damn things and they really don't do anything at all.  Instead, I would love to do a cute xeriscaped area or maybe a rock garden.  Of course, this will depend on my training for the Boise HIM and how much time I feel like spending on a part of the yard that I don't see very often.  And we're going to start veggies inside and move them into the yard in ~April.  Two months earlier than this year.  Not certain what I want to plant, but I do know I want more basil, would like to try cukes and squash again, and I definitely want to grow romanesco squash (its like zucchini but so much tastier!).  We are thinking that we planted too late and our plants just couldn't get a good start in life, thus the very poor production.  I may also do some spring crops like lettuce and things. 

So that's the plan for next year.  We're still at least a good couple of summers away from things looking really nice, but its a good start.